Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill (Standing Orders)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 27 May 1976.

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Photo of Mr John Eden Mr John Eden , Bournemouth West 12:00, 27 May 1976

The hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Mackintosh) stands the argument about hybridity on its head. He certainly stood on its head the principle that he enunciated about the erosion of the rights of this House in terms of parliamentary democracy. The Government base their case on three assumptions. First, for the purposes of this Bill they do not accept that a "rig" is to be defined as a "ship". They claim that they do not challenge the ruling of Mr. Speaker but, nonetheless, they have been at pains to demonstrate that for the purposes of this Bill a rig is not to be regarded as a ship.

The second point they make is that employment prospects in this industry will be damaged unless the Bill is speedily assisted on to the statute book. Their third assumption is that whatever the precedents, procedures or practices of this House may be, the House tonight, if it so wishes, can decide to rescue the Government from their embarrassment.

In the few moments available to me I would briefly comment on those three assumptions. I read earlier today that the "Key Victoria" is now drilling off the coast of Zaire. How did it get there? Was it carried there? Did it walk? No, The answer is that it floated there. It was towed there and it floated there—and, for the purposes of this Bill, a "ship" means a floating or submersible vessel.

It was his realisation of the significance of this point, combined with his intimate knowledge of the Standing Orders of this House, which led my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) so brilliantly to make his submission to Mr. Speaker. It is true that there had been an undertaking to exclude Marathon from the Bill, but the purpose of the hybrid procedure was not just to protect those who wished to be excluded from the Bill; it was to give an opportunity to those who might have been included within the terms of the Bill to make their representations before a Select Committee.

Secondly, whatever the arguments or doubts about the rig may be, in any case Marathon is shortly to be building ships, if it is not already doing so.

In respect of employment there is no urgency for this Bill. Nationalisation as such is not what is wanted. That has been made clear not least by all the employees of the Bristol Channel Ship Repairers Ltd. They said that Nationalisation would drastically affect employment prospects in Welsh ports and endanger millions of pounds worth of exports. What is wanted is not nationalisation, but an end to uncertainty. That can be brought about under existing legislation—a point that has already been made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), the Leader of the Liberal Party, and by others. By working with the companies concerned to prepare a nation-wide plan for the industry, and by determining the degree of Government support necessary to achieve it, the Government could end uncertainty in this industry tomorrow—an uncertainty largely precipitated and sustained by the proposal for nationalisation itself.

The third point on which the Government's case seems to rest is the one that causes me, and I am sure all hon. Members on the Opposition side, most anxiety. Ian Aitken, in his article in today's Guardian, opened with these words: The future and perhaps the survival of the British shipbuilding industry hung in the balance last night". What hangs in the balance today is the maintenance of free parliamentary democracy under this Government, not just for this one decision alone, important though that may be, but for the very reasons that the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian so eloquently suggested—that there has been an accumulation of matters, small in themselves but amounting, when taken as a whole, to a serious erosion of the rights of this House.

As The Times put it: This is no mere procedural technicality. It is a matter of the denial of a right conferred by constitutional convention. The right in a hybrid Bill situation is the right of any interest affected by proposals in such a Bill to have those views represented before a Select Committee of this House. The Standing Orders of this House have been designed as protection in just such a situation.

Of all the words spoken yesterday by the Leader of the House I found the most worrying those words that are often used these days by Ministers: It is for the House to decide."—[Official Report, 26th May 1976; Vol. 912, c. 446.] Those words worry me in the context in which the right hon. Gentleman used them. Those words worry me, too, in the context of the speech of the right hon. Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart), who, like so many of her kind—I say this with respect; I mean, like so many who hold views of her kind—advanced the case for the erosion of the rights of individuals by calling in aid the practices of a free institution.